Just a random guy's completely honest thoughts laid bare for the world to see.

fredag 9. januar 2015

Alone in the Universe? I think NOT

Are we alone in the universe?

The answer is NO.

Let me start off by saying that people who think we are alone in the universe falls into 1 of these categories.

1: Religious.

2: Lacking basic education.
3: Stupid.
4: All the above.

Why is this you ask? well it is the shear odds of us being alone that dictates that we cannot be alone.
Allow me to demonstrate this with a few culinary delights for thought.

Factors :
A: The size of the universe.
B: The age of the universe.
C: the versatility of life.

there is alot more factors in favor of life in the universe but lets start with these 3.

Size of the Universe!

The size of the universe. It is so large that our brains are not in any way, shape or form able to imagine it, we need visual aids to comprehend. Here is a few Visuals to get you started.

A1: Size Comparison of earth vs the solar system then our sun vs largest known stars.
+ Fact: There are from 200-400 Billion stars in OUR galaxy WIKI
+ Fact: There are atleast 170 Billion galaxies in the Universe. WIKI
+ Fact: The milky way (our galaxy) is a middle weight galaxy, there are smaller galaxies with about 10 Billion stars and there are larger ones with up to 100 TRILLION stars. so for the sake of not getting to advanced lets assume the milky way is the average amount of stars per galaxy.

This is a REALLY big number. once again our brains are going to need visual aid.

A2: Visualization of 1 trillion in dollars.
+ Fact That was 1 Trillion dollars in 100$ bills. meaning that all those stacks of cash need to be 100 times bigger to actually reach 1 Trillion bills.
+ Fact the universe has 34 Trillion stars so you need to Multiply it by 34 also..

meaning the amount of stars in the univers is the amount of bills in the end of the movie if you multiply it by a hundred then again with 34...
Im sorry i couldnt find a better Visual aid but with some imagination and some awe this should get you going.

so you got a basic understanding of the dimensions of the space we know about and how big and filled with stars it actually is. Time to move on to the age of the universe and how long its been around.

Age of the Universe!

B1: The Cosmic calender
This informative site explains the entirety of time from the big bang til now how things would be if it was all condesed to 1 kalender year
Highlights:
* May: Our galaxy the Milky way takes shape.
* September: Our solar system forms. and life begins (within the same month)
* Desember: Its the end of the year and some really intresting things start to happen.
Desember 17: First Fish
Desember 20: First Plants
Desember 21: First Insects
Desember 25: DINOSAURS!!!
Desember 28: First Birds and Flowers.
Desember 29; Dino's go bye bye
Desember 31: last day of the year. now things start getting REALLY intresting.
the timescale at this point gets so tight im going to do it backwards from midnight assuming midnight is NOW.

so.....
1 second ago: Colombus finds a continent blocking his way to india. yay for america!

4.5 seconds ago: Some carpenters wife has an affair and gets a child as a "virgin" so as not to humiliate her husband. named the little critter jesus and moved on.

16 seconds ago: people too lazy to move on once their sheep run away form the first cities the world has ever seen.

22 seconds ago: people figure out that if they plant stuff, then stuff will grow. yay agriculture.

1 minute ago: neanderthals die out, so long brothers!

6 minutes ago: We arrive in all our anatomically correctness. greeted by some guys calling themselves neaderthals. we dont like them.

So there you have it. the universe has been around for a year, you have been around for about 1/4th of a second (if you are the oldest person ever recorded) and all your ancestors before you started popping up 6 minutes ago.

Meaning we are fucking young.

so moving on to the 3rd criteria for proving we are not alone out here.

the versatility of life!!!!

On this lonely backwater planet situated in a not very central or intresting spot in a average, unremarkable galaxy that is situated in a not very central or intresting part of the universe there is life.
LOTS of life.

We are talking about MILLIONS of different species from algea to elephants, insects, mammals, invertibrate, fish, fowl and all that.
But what Really is intresting is something called Extremophiles.

what is an Extremophile you ask?
well it is basically an organism capable of living in a place we didnt think anything could live.

Only 1 link needed, here it is Extremophile
Clicking the link will blow your mind if you have not heard this term before.
short version: Extremophiles are organsims living in crazy shit that nobody thought could sustain life.
a few examples of that is for instance:
* inside nuclear reactors in radiation that would kill anything else in seconds.
* in a lake in antarctica trapped under kilometres of ice where its so salty that the dead sea would be like a refreshing sugary drink in comparison.
* right next to black smokers (small volcanoes on the sea bottom spewing out highly corrosive and toxic smoke) (also very hot because its a bleedin volcanoe)

another example would be the Tardigrade also known as the water bear or moss piglet.
it can survive:
Dehydration by turning itself into something like a sugar crystal.
High preassure up to 1200 time atmospheric pressure.
The Vacuum of space.
Temperatures it can survive from minus 200 til + 150 Celcius.
Radiation of about 4000 gy and they are fine and eggs still hatch. (5gy of radiation will kill you)

Conclusion

So what have we learned?
* we have learned that space is bigger then the biggestest big thing like ever!
* we have learned that space is older then dumbledore and gandalf combined + ALOT MORE
* we have learned that life can live abso-fucking-lutely EVERYWHERE!!

still think we are alone in the universe?
then you sir are a Raging Moron. have a nice day.